Long story short, I submitted three short pieces to an online magazine. All three were rejected by an email for each piece.
Two of the pieces were rejected with the standard “after careful consideration, we find this does not meet our needs at this time.”
But one piece was rejected thusly: “We found many strengths to recommend your work and, overall, much to admire.” along with the “after careful consideration, we find this does not meet our needs at this time.”
Should I find this encouraging? Or are they just trying to be nice to me?
Should I assume they liked this one piece better than the other two?
Would emailing back about these questions be a really stupid thing to do?
If it’s an obviously non form letter, maybe they are trying to be nice and/or encouraging.
I found that publishers, and I worked for one for a while, tended to send out extremely blunt rejections to head off any would be writers coming back and wasting time. And maybe I’m phrasing that poortly as the publishers didn’t want to give false hope and feeding some wannabee writer obsession.
Yes, I think you’re reading too much into it. If you submit the exact same short pieces in 6 months, you’ll probably get the same response. If you re-submit, you might get lucky and accepted. I seriously doubt that the publisher keeps a database for “promising submitters that might produce a winner next time”, screens submission names, and then fast tracks those submissions for special reading. In my experience, they wade through the slush pile of the day, immediate reject the ones that don’t fit the bill that day, and move on.
Bumping my own thread after one reply (Thank you China Guy.) is always embarrassing.
Actually, I wasn’t hoping to resubmit to the same magazine later. I was just wondering if the the difference in the rejection notices, i.e. the one sent with an encouraging comment, meant that that particular piece had more merit than the others. In other words: Is my stuff even worth sending in to anyone at all?
I realize the only way to get published is to send stuff in. I just wonder if my stuff is worth the effort. I thought, maybe if the encouraging comment was true, then sure.
But I really have to wonder about my writing abilities if I have to bump my own threads like this.
It sounds like two were rejected immediately due to some very obvious reason, such as not fitting the format criteria or not fitting the subject matter they wanted to publish, but that it took longer to reject the third one. Definitely not worth reading too much into, and certainly not worth writing a letter asking them to clarify whether they meant to be encouraging. They never do. Either the work is what they want, or it isn’t.
I belong to two writer’s critics groups. One I trust to give constructive criticism, the other, not so much. But I still like going there.
Both groups like my stuff, so they say. When I started in the group I trust more, there were two guys who hated my stuff, but now they’re gone. No, they didn’t leave because of me. But lately, I don’t know, this more useful group hasn’t really given me any criticism of weight except to say I should write more, since I don’t always make the deadline with the installments of my novel. (I substitute something else I’ve already written when that happens.)
I don’t know why I don’t have much confidence in what I write. I’ve been doing it for most of my life, and most people seem to like it. But I’ve only sent in stuff to publishers three times in my life. All no go.
Everyone reads too much into rejection slips. For years, for instance, The New Yorker had a tiny Roman numeral I on their rejection slip. Aspiring authors would invariably think they were doing pretty well to get the “I” rejection slip instead of the “II” rejection slip. However, the was only a single rejection slip; the reason for the “I” was forgotten. (I also know of an author who got a personal rejection from the New Yorker with her first submission – and gave up writing, thinking she had failed. No one could explain to her that they’d kill for a personal rejection.)
In any case, I could four levels of rejection:
– form rejection.
– personal rejection from an editor.
– personal rejection that discusses specific points about the story.
– request for rewrite.
This is a category 2. That’s a good sign – editors do not write personal rejections if they don’t think you show some talent.
However, do not resubmit the story. It’s unlikely you can fix the issues the editor finds (unless he specifically asks for a rewrite). Write something new, and send this story to another market. If you do decide to resubmit – and, again, a new story is a better bet by far – include a cover letter saying that you had sent the story before and have rewritten it to make it better.
I once got a personal rejection from the New Yorker. Handwritten (on the standard “does not meet our needs” sheet). It said: “Nice story, but not quite enough. RA.”
Of course what I wanted to do was call up, find out who wrote that, and ask them: Not enough WHAT? I can put more of it in! Whatever it is! He didn’t mean words…did he? Surely it has enough words. Maybe…atmosphere. Yes! I can put more of that in.
Etc.
Yeah, way to miss the point.
I later found out that no, you don’t get a handwritten note every single time.
ETA: I just pulled it out and looked at it. There’s nothing on there that could be construed as a Roman numeral.